Fragmented Morality

Ch. 1

Trigger Warning: Abuse, SA, Violence, and Sensitive content.

It is to be expected that these themes would occur in a walking dead fanfiction, especially with the main character being Carol's son, but I just wanted to warn everyone beforehand.

I am trying to go about writing this story as respectfully as I can, but I will be going into detail about some topics. If you find that something I have written upsets you because I've written it in an insensitive way, please let me know so that I can change it wherever possible. In saying that, read at your own discretion.

-

I didn't remember every aspect of my early childhood. It was almost as if I just woke up one day and what was, was. My first known memory was one where I was home alone with my sister, Sophia, and stepdad, Ed.

I was nine.

I was drawing quietly to myself in the bedroom I shared with Sophia. There were holes in the paper from where the pencil had gone through to the stained carpet, but I didn't mind, I was just happy to have something to do.

At the time, Sophia was three and taking a nap in our bed by the wall. I remember drawing three figures sitting at a table so packed with food that it was all falling off the edges onto the floor. The figures were my mum, Sophia and I. We all had huge smiles on our faces for the food we were going to eat.

Of course, the drawing just looked like a bunch of blobs and we weren't really going to eat that much. I just felt so hungry at the time that the only way my young brain could deal with it was by drawing a happy family. In reality, I knew we weren't happy or a real family at that.

During this time, Ed was meant to look after Sophia and I while our mum was out shopping, but he locked us in our room and watched TV downstairs so that we wouldn't disturb him. We would be stuck in the small room without food, water or any way for us to go to the bathroom until our mother got home. Most of the time, we would be fine, but we were just kids and kids were always prone to making mistakes.

It wasn't unusual for an accident to occur while we were confined in this dark corner of the house. It just ensured that I learnt how to clean things up spotless and hide things from a young age.

When our mum wasn't doing the grocery shopping, I would often hear Ed yelling at her, which was always followed by him hurting her. At the time, I never saw my step-dad hurt her, but I remember every time I would see my mum afterwards, bruised and swollen. I remember asking her, one day, why he hit her, what she did that was so bad as to deserve to be physically harmed. She would always reply with the same thing: 'he... just gets so angry sometimes... he doesn't mean it though. He loves us.' I remember that conversation extremely vividly despite it being years ago.

I remember because it left me unable to believe in love. I was sure that if my mother, the only person that had been with me from the beginning, always on my side, would be treated without care by the person she loved, surely it would happen to me too. It carved a deep-rooted fear into me, the fear that should I ever love someone, they would come to hurt me too.

●

The next most prominent of my early memories was my tenth birthday. I wasn't permitted to invite any friends over because Ed was angry at us. Mum had tried to leave, running away with my sister and I to Atlanta. When we got there, we stayed the night in a shelter for people like us. It was scary, but my young brain understood that it was a safer place than where we lived. Despite being free from my step-father's wrath, we ultimately went home the following day. I didn't really understand, but mum said we had no choice other than to go back since we had nowhere else to go.